whose perfection
hung in more easy folds about her, whose brightness was softened down by
some of 'those fair defects which best conciliate love,' would, by
appealing more dependently to your protection, have stood a much better
chance with your good nature. All these suppositions, however, I have
been led into by my intense anxiety to acquit you of any thing like a
capricious abandonment of such a woman[93]; and, totally in the dark as
I am with respect to all but the fact of your separation, you cannot
conceive the solicitude, the fearful solicitude, with which I look
forward to a history of the transaction from your own lips when we
meet,--a history in which I am sure of, at least, _one_ virtue--manly
candour."

[Footnote 93: It will be perceived from this that I was as yet
unacquainted with the true circumstances of the transaction.]

* * * * *

With respect to the causes that may be supposed to have led to this
separation, it seems needless, with the characters of both parties
before our eyes, to go in quest of any very remote or mysterious reasons
to account for it. I have already, in some observations on the general
character of men of genius, endeavoured to point out those
peculiarities, both in disposition and habitudes, by which, in the far
greater number of instances, they have been found unfitted for domestic
happiness. Of these defects, (which are, as it were, the shadow that
genius casts, and too generally, it is to be feared, in proportion to
its stature,) Lord Byron could not, of course, fail to have inherited
his share, in common with all the painfully-gifted class to which he
belonged. How thoroughly, with respect to one attribute of this
temperament which he possessed,--one, that "sicklies o'er" the face of
happiness itself,--he was understood by the person most interested in
observing him, will appear from the following anecdote, as related by
himself.[94]

"People have wondered at the melancholy which runs through my writings.
Others have wondered at my personal gaiety. But I recollect once, after
an hour in which I had been sincerely and particularly gay and rather
brilliant, in company, my wife replying to me when I said (upon her
remarking my high spirits), 'And yet, Bell, I have been called and
miscalled melancholy--you must have seen how falsely, frequently?'--'No,
Byron,' she answered, 'it is not so: at heart you are the most
melancholy of mankind; and ofte